Last week we were privileged to host a team from the TITIP school in Papua, Indonesia. The team consisted of Larry and Willa Yost (left) and pastor Oyang Sesaray. TITIP stands for “Training Indonesians for Transition to Institutional Programs” but it also is an Indonesian word that refers to something that is left for safekeeping until the owner returns for it. This, in a way, is what TITIP does for the parents of the young people that it trains. TITIP is one of the educational arms of the “Yayasan Pelayanan Antarbudaya” a non-profit organization that assists with community development in West Papua. Pak Oyang and the Yosts were visiting PIU to explore sending some of their TITIP graduates to PIU to become students in our accredited degree programs.
For
most of the first day our visitors sat with our PIU leadership team to discuss what a partnership would look like. Pictured are Christel Wood our academic VP, Hartmut Scherer, PIU distance education coordinator, Urte Scherer, our registrar, the Yosts, Pak Oyang and me. After much discussion we determined that we would start with four students enrolled in our distance education program for the upcoming spring semester. The Yosts will mentor the new Indonesian PIU students at the TITIP site there. In the future we plan to have TITIP students studying in residence on the Guam campus. Pastor Oyang was also our chapel speaker on Tuesday the 6th.
The Indonesian group also had the opportunity to meet with the Guam Minister’s Association at its monthly meeting. It was a good opportunity for them to meet several of the pastors of the Guam churches, military chaplains, and leaders of other para-church organizations. GMA members seem to be very excited about the connections PIU is making locally and overseas. We had a great time of fellowship there.
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